


Hiraeth

by Razzaroo



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 01:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11841504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Razzaroo/pseuds/Razzaroo
Summary: "It starts, as many things in Kirkwall do, with Hawke and an empty evening and the Hanged Man. Good stories start in taverns, Varric says; so do good tumbles, says Isabela." In which Fenris loves and lets go and learns what it means to find home.





	Hiraeth

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately for me, Fenris is an onion. A many layered onion. If I really wanted to reach his centre and make myself cry, this would probably need at least another thousand or so words. I don't have that many, nor do I have the energy, so there's a lot about him that I haven't really touched on here.
> 
> The poem that Sebastian quotes is The Good Morrow by John Donne :)

_Home is not where you are from, it is where you belong. Some of us travel the whole world to find it. Others, find it in a person._

-  **Beau Taplin**

* * *

 

It starts, as many things in Kirkwall do, with Hawke and an empty evening and the Hanged Man. Good stories start in taverns, Varric says; so do good tumbles, says Isabela. Fenris, who only has the Hanged Man to go on, can’t say he agrees with either of them.

“I give up,” Hawke says, voice slurring, stretching out across the table, catlike, and abandoning his cards, “You’re too good at this.”

“No, sweetness, you just have a lot of tells,” Isabela says.  She reaches out to gather up his cards, “Now, do you have money to pay me or are my drinks on your tab again?”

Fenris shifts in his seat as Hawke starts digging through his pockets and leans against Sebastian, who’s warm and sturdy and so delightfully sober, even when Fenris has let the Hanged Man’s bad wine and cheap ale go to his head. He sighs and lets Sebastian toy with his hair, because he’s safe here and his brands don’t ache tonight and the others are too busy losing their coin to Isabela to pay attention to what he’s doing.

“I have better wine,” Fenris says, when he sees Sebastian grimace at the taste of whatever Corff has on offer, “And better literature, for that matter.”

“Oh, good,” Sebastian says, “I can feel a discussion about the Dissonant Verses coming on.”

He stands and Fenris stands with him, skirting around the table as Hawke grasps for Sebastian’s hand, presses a drunken kiss to his fingertips. Sebastian indulges him, because he indulges everything Hawke does, and Fenris wonders if this is some game between them. He steps out of the Hanged Man, stepping out of air that smells of stale sweat and beer and into the damp warmth of Kirkwall summer. The air smells of wet dogs and trampled fruit from the day’s market.

“What did Hawke want?” Fenris asks when Sebastian joins him.

“To tell me to stay out of trouble,” Sebastian says, “As if the name Hawke isn’t the biggest magnet for trouble in Kirkwall.”

He sets off through Kirkwall as if this were his city, his birth right, his home. Fenris feels a pang of envy, of longing; one day, he hopes, his own hungry, foreign roots will find home in Kirkwall’s soil.

 

* * *

 

If Sebastian stays, it is only ever for the night; always, he is gone by morning, like a ghost, like a dream.

Fenris takes no offence to it. He knows Sebastian needs to return to the Chantry for morning prayer, return before most of the inhabitants wake, because he knows there’s gossip enough. So Fenris wakes alone, in a cold bed, to the sound of music.

His footsteps are light on his floors, the quiet, controlled gait of a man still so uncertain of his own safety. The mansion is dark in dawn’s weak light and Fenris pauses to light his candle stubs, illuminating the remnants of the night before: empty bottles and cups, books open with their pages marked, sheets of Sebastian’s neat handwriting side by side with Fenris’s wobbly imitation.

Fenris picks at bread and cheese and sits by the open window, listening to the Chant of Light across the city, and wonders if, one day, he’ll wake up early enough to hear Sebastian sing.

 

* * *

 

The forests that grow in clumps in the land around Kirkwall are prickling places, full of brambles and shrubby undergrowth, the trunks of the trees wrapped tight in ivy. Fenris flexes his feet, glad for his decision to wear boots. The lyrium in his skin beats, like a heart, ebb and flow, like the tide.

They sleep in a scooped out hollow in the earth, behind a wall of thick tree roots. Hawke sleeps wrapped around Anders, plastered to the mage so tightly, Fenris reckons it a wonder that Anders is ever free.

He envies them.

He lies awake in the earth, his breathing in between the pulses of his brands, and he watches the night creatures of the woods, as much one of them as he is an inhabitant of Kirkwall. Sebastian sleeps behind him, forehead pressed to his back, breath soft on aching skin. Fenris wants to turn, to find Sebastian’s hands in the dark, but to move would disturb him, so he stays still, counting breaths and stars and waiting for the hours to wind away to morning.

Something outside their shelter snaps, breaking the stillness, and Sebastian snorts awake. Fenris feels him move, rub the last traces of sleep from his face. They can’t sit up so Sebastian stretches like a cat, spine clicking, before he settles against the shape of Fenris.

“Cannae sleep, Fenris?”

Fenris shifts, rolling and moving closer, despite the brands. He longs for touch, for gentleness, for softness and kindness, the kind Hawke shares with Anders as easily as breathing. He grips Sebastian’s shirt, rests his forehead against Sebastian’s collar bone and sighs, because this is as far as he can go.

“It’s…only the usual,” he says, “The weather is changing.”

“I know someone who sells bath salts that reduce pain,” Sebastian says and Fenris wants to curl into the vibrations in his throat, “I could get you some, see if it helps.”

Fenris doubts but he says nothing. He fears breaking this fragile thing between them, and so he stays quiet and listens to Sebastian’s pulse, brands beating in time, ebb and flow, like the far off sea.

 

* * *

 

It’s raining when he finally returns to Kirkwall. A fine gossamer rain, enough to soak him through when he is careless. And he is careless; he is angry. He stands in the rain, looking up at the Chantry, all the candles burning in those windows, and a storm rolls ever closer, the sky black with the promise of it.

Fenris notices none of it. Or rather, he wants to notice none of it, because his bones hurt and there’s blood between his fingers and he doesn’t know where else to go.

Sisters stare when he finally decides that yes, the Chantry is where he wants to be, but he ignores them. He ignores them and he ignores Elthina and he ignores the towering Andraste because he is not here for them.

He finds Sebastian in the smaller chapel, one kept for private prayers. Fenris stops to drink in the sight of him and it feels wrong, almost, to disturb him, wrong that Fenris and all his turmoil should be in this Chantry. As if he belongs there. As if this is his place to tread.

“Fenris?”

Sebastian moves to stand but Fenris stops him, gesturing with one hand, before moving to join him. He feels even more out of place now, his armour harsh against Sebastian’s Chantry robes. Sebastian looks him up and down, sees the storm brewing, sees the blood on his fingers, but he doesn’t touch him.

“What happened?”

Fenris’s fists tighten, “Danarius happened.”

He says no more and Sebastian doesn’t ask for him to. His head feels full, bowed by the weight of all his questions.

_Who am I? I am a man with no name._

_What is it I’m looking for? Home. Freedom. Safety._

_Why am I here? Because Sebastian is here._

He folds and he feels defeated and worn down; he hates Hadriana and Danarius and feels beaten by it, as a rock is by a river. Sebastian touches him now, a hand on his back, and hums something which might be the Chant or it might be one of innumerable love songs he remembers and keeps for the rain.

Overhead, the thunder rolls.

 

* * *

 

“Sebastian.” The name sits in Fenris’s mouth, like sea salt, like wood smoke, like a breath of winter air, “Seb- _as_ -tian.” He wishes he could make it sound like poetry.

Sebastian smiles and Fenris mirrors him. Beside them, there’s a roll of parchment, Sebastian’s neat writing in a column down the side, Fenris’s wobbly lettering alongside. Candlelight makes the ink gleam, glows on the glass of the wine bottle. Fenris lies with his head in Sebastian’s lap, a rare moment of security, Sebastian’s hand in his hair.

“Fen- _ris_ ,” Sebastian says and his hand pulls, snagged on a tangle, “Hawke says you’ve been doing some reading behind his back. Borrowed some poetry, he says.”

Fenris reaches for the borrowed book, pulls it close, still open to the last one he’d been trying to read. He sits up, so Sebastian can have the book on his knees, and leans on him, hair still ruffled on one side. Sebastian hums, and this Fenris knows is a Starkhaven song, and traces one finger down the page.

“’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be,” Sebastian reads and his accent is delicious, “If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee.” He taps the page, “This belongs to Hawke?”

Fenris laughs, “His mother, I think.”

He rests on Sebastian’s shoulder, contentedly tired and aching for sleep. Sebastian continues reading, and Fenris takes the pauses at the end of each line to kiss him, small gentle things, cautious and quiet, still trying to get used to giving affection on _his_ terms and no one else’s.

“If our two loves be one, or, thou and I,” Sebastian says, and his kisses are quiet, his calloused fingers quieter still and this, Fenris thinks, must be part of the man he had been before coming to Kirkwall, “Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.”

 

* * *

 

He sits, sometimes, and watches the alienage.

It’s easy for him to do, to slide through Lowtown like a shadow, to perch on one of the roofs and watch the other elves of the city go through their lives, to watch them dance at a wedding party, to see them pay respect at their painted tree and mingle when the evenings grow long and balmy. If they see him, they say nothing, and he makes no move to approach them.

Merrill had said to him once, _They’re your people too, Fenris,_ and he’d curled his lip at the idea because they are not his people. His people are in Tevinter, the nameless and the faceless, and he is disconnected even from them. His brands set him apart, no matter how much Merrill wants to try and reconcile them with Dalish tattoos.

Still, when he accompanies Hawke to the alienage, he stops, runs a hand over the bark of the vhenadahl, and he wonders if such a thing had belonged to him, once, when he was very young.

 

* * *

 

 “Does it bother you?”

Anders huffs, as is his way when Fenris speaks to him, “A lot bothers me, Fenris. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“How Hawke looks at him.”

Anders turns his head, looks to where Sebastian and Hawke are, Sebastian showing Hawke how to pluck out Free Marcher folk songs on his lute. Something jumps in Anders’s jaw, and something ticks over in his head and Fenris watches, because Anders wears every emotion so openly in his face.

“No,” he says eventually, and Fenris half-believes him, “It doesn’t.” He considers Fenris, “Does it bother _you?”_

Hawke looks at Sebastian the way Fenris imagines the men in Isabela’s grand romances look at their sweethearts; untouchable, perfect, something dreamed into life. Too good to be true. But this, Fenris knows, is a lie. There is no such thing as something too good to be true; there’s always some flaws, something that brings a perfect thing back down to the level of imperfection. In the case of Sebastian, those flaws are in the temper that still runs too warm, in bitten nails and the fact that he still remembers more love songs than Chantry hymns.

He realises it doesn’t bother him how Hawke looks at Sebastian. It bothers him that _he_ might look at Sebastian the same way. He wants to look at him the way Hawke looks at Anders; imperfect and human and still so beloved besides.

He doesn’t give Anders an answer.

 

* * *

 

“Hawke thinks I should retake Starkhaven.”

Fenris pauses, whetstone stilling against his blade. Sebastian lingers by his fireplace and there’s a troubled pinch between his brows, something Fenris wishes he could smooth away, even with all the troubles of his own.

“What do you think is right?” Fenris asks, because there’s no point asking Sebastian what he _wants_.

“I think it would be right to keep my vows,” Sebastian says, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, the line of his body shifting with it, “But at the same time, what I hear about Starkhaven…” He shakes his head, runs one hand through his hair, “I sometimes wish the Maker made things easy. Sent signs in times of doubt.”

“If you spend your life waiting for signs, you’ll spend it standing still,” Fenris says and he flexes his fingers against the hilt of his sword, “You have to decide for yourself.” He wrinkles his nose, “As Hawke would say, do what makes you happy.”

“Ah, Fenris, you know men don’t always know when they’re happy.”

Fenris looks up at him and wants to say that _he_ knows when he is happy, or at least, close to happiness. But he sees Sebastian’s expression, downtrodden and torn and so so lost, and he says nothing. He never knows what to say to comfort someone.

“Maybe tomorrow will give you an answer,” he says, and he knows it’s a poor attempt at consolation.

“Maybe.” Sebastian doesn’t sound convinced. His expression turns cold, “Either way, I’ll be _very_ interested in what Lady Harimann has to say.”

 

* * *

 

Hawke’s estate lies dark and dreaming, the windows covered with black, the halls filled with carnations and dark red roses. Orana has fallen silent again and Hawke’s dwarven servants have gone away; Messere Hawke needs space and quiet, Bodahn had said, and would get neither with Sandal around.

Fenris does not ask where they’ve gone. This is a house in mourning, and it is not his place to ask questions.

Anders haunts the manse as much as Leandra ever could. When not in his clinic, he wanders the halls, hovers at Hawke’s side, and breathes life back into a man who Fenris had thought could walk away from anything.

(But Fenris had been wrong. Hawke had not walked away after his duel with the Arishok. For one cold, heart stopping moment, Fenris had been afraid he didn’t _want_ to.)

Varric comes and he brings books and stories and cheap ale and all the things that made Hawke smile, in another life. He brings food and tells Orana to get some sleep and writes letters to Carver that must come more easily to him than they do for Gamlen.

Merrill comes and she brings plant pots, spilling with rosemary and mint, as well as homemade jams and little pots of honey from the alienage. She dots Hawke’s room with tiny carvings, Dalish charms: for luck, for laughs, for good health. She plies Anders with elvhen remedies and tells him not to work so hard, because his bones are showing.

Isabela comes and she apologises and looks as lost as she ever could. She doesn’t stay long.

Fenris comes and he doesn’t know what to say. He picks up where Orana leaves off. He cleans out the fireplace and polishes the surfaces and scrubs Anders’s surgical tools because he needs to be of use, needs to help Hawke in some small way.

Aveline doesn’t come at all. Fenris wonders how long this rift between her and Hawke will last; Garrett already forgives so much, maybe too much.

Sebastian comes when Hawke asks for him. Fenris spies them both in Hawke’s bedroom. Hawke sits on the edge of his bed, middle still wrapped in bandages because he’s told Anders he wants to let _this one_ scar; one hand, he has curled in Sebastian’s robe, his forehead pressed against Sebastian’s hip. Fenris steps back and closes the door, feeling like he’s interrupted something intensely private.

Later, he takes Anders and they make a temporary and short lived peace on the Wounded Coast, fighting side by side to weed out the slavers taking advantage of Kirkwall’s weakness, and it soothes his restless, useless hands.

 

* * *

 

Sister. Varania. Fenris turns her name over in his mind and thinks that it doesn’t fit with his, not the same way other siblings seem to fit together. Varric and Bartrand. Carver and Garrett and Bethany. Sebastian and Oisín and Lir. He gropes through the blank spots in his mind, searching for a time and a place when his name fit alongside hers.

He longs for her. She’s a promise of a past, something more to him than the name Fenris and lyrium brands and the black spot he calls a memory. She’s a promise that once he had a family, that once he had not been alone, that he’d had someone who called him theirs and still see him as a person and not property.

He takes his time in replying to her letter, wrangling his wobbling spidery handwriting into something readable, aping Sebastian’s writing as best as he possibly can. Carefully, he reads over his reply, once, twice, three times and wonders if he should have someone read it, but something pulls tight over his chest and he knows this is something between him and his sister. His sister, this one last connection to a lost past, his lost self, to a sense of belonging that’s so alien to him.

He sends the letter and tries to not let his hopes get too high, but they still grow, like flowers, pushing through cracks for a glimpse of the sun.

 

* * *

 

_Leto. That’s your name._

He runs.

_Fenris doesn’t belong to anyone._

The air is heavy, thick, molasses on his tongue.

_The lad is rather skilled, isn’t he?_

He burns, all humiliation and anger. He remembers and finds he doesn’t want to.

_There is nothing for me to reclaim. I am alone._

His mother is ashes. His father isn’t even a memory. His sister sold him for a promise. What is a family? He stops.

“Fenris?”

(What is a family? Parents with no time for you, brothers who feel too old for you, a grand cleric who doesn’t believe in you.)

Fenris folds himself into Sebastian’s arms, presses into his chest, and he makes his choice.

What is a family? It’s wine and poetry and Starkhaven love songs. It’s hearth sides and candles and writing lessons. It’s gentle touches and the Chant of Light and finding someone who makes him feel safe again.

 

* * *

 

“I’ve withdrawn my request to rejoin the Chantry.”

Fenris tugs on his ear, unsure if he’s heard right, and looks at Sebastian. They’re on his rooftop, sharing the last of Fenris’s summer wine. The sun, sinking below the city horizon, all molten gold, makes even Kirkwall look like a treasure. Sebastian’s edges are gilded.

Fenris wants to ask why, but he doesn’t. He wants to ask where Sebastian will go, but he doesn’t. Something like fear bubbles in his stomach, the gnawing worry that leaving the Chantry means Sebastian will leave Kirkwall, leave this city that they’ve both carved a home into, return to Starkhaven.

(What is family? Family’s a cousin who needs you. What is home? Home is where you are loved. And Starkhaven would love Sebastian. How could Fenris compete with the love of a city state?)

Fear strangles him and so he doesn’t ask. Instead, he takes a long drink of wine and rocks back in his seat. Sebastian watches him, waiting for an answer.

“Stay with me,” he says eventually, taking a breath and letting it go. Sebastian’s face breaks with relief.

“Where could I go,” Sebastian says, “where you would not also be?”

 

* * *

 

Their contentment doesn’t last long. One golden, jewel bright week where they are at ease, Sebastian with his own name, and Fenris with this new start he has.

Then the Chantry is rent asunder, and the whole world along with it.

Only a few facts remain: Hawke will not leave Anders; Fenris cannot bring himself to leave Hawke; Fenris refuses to lose Sebastian.

Isabela’s boat rocks, a cradle on the sea, and Fenris can still feel ash in his hair, choked and caked in blood. Sebastian stands and stares down at the dark sea; there’s blood on his face, trickling down from a cut on his forehead, but he doesn’t notice. Fenris stands at his shoulder as Isabela sets a course for Ostwick and watches as Kirkwall crumbles. No knight-commander; no first enchanter; no grand cleric. But there’s still open books in Fenris’s house, still dishes from breakfast, still an unmade bed. There’s still a pantry to be inventoried, and shirts to be stitched and arrows that need fletching. There’s still a life, and a home, and Fenris leaves claw marks letting them go.

“Maybe someday we’ll return to Kirkwall.”

Fenris twitches at Sebastian’s voice, dry as ash and empty, and he presses closer still. Sebastian smells of iron and sea salt, thick and pungent and sticking to the back of Fenris’s throat. It doesn’t suit him.

“You’ll have Starkhaven,” Fenris says.

Sebastian sighs, deep and long and uncertain, and looks up at the spindly sea birds overhead, “I will have Starkhaven.”

They arrive in Ostwick by nightfall. Fenris pulls Sebastian behind the cabin to say his goodbyes, before letting him go to the Trevelyans, already waiting on the dock to take him to safety. Fenris kisses him, Sebastian’s hands in his hair, and every kiss is a promise.

_I’ll remember you_

_I’ll come back for you_

_I love you I love you I love you_

 

* * *

 

Fenris keeps his promises.

The world has changed. Sebastian head bows under a crown. Fenris has new scars and less peace. Fenris had been right; Starkhaven does love Sebastian. And they’ll love him too, Sebastian tells him. The elves already do, already more open to him than Kirkwall had been.

But there’s still open books and love poems. Still wine and hearthsides. Still Starkhaven love songs and prayers and imperfections. Still soft beds and soft mornings and always the ebb and flow pulse of Fenris’s brands, keeping time with the sea.

They are together.

They belong.

They make it home.


End file.
